Sets up improvised studio, bed-sitter, York Street, Marylebone,
London (November 1946). The artist recalls: 'It was a fierce winter made
worse by post-war rationing, my gas fire being turned off automatically
at intervals. Without adequate daylight or heat I painted in an overcoat
and fingerless woollen gloves by electric light into the night.'70 Meets
Jankel Adler (1895-1949), who's post-cubist work impresses le Brocquy. Embarks on Tinker Woman with Newspaper (a.k.a. The Last Tinker, 1947-48), portraying the matriarch of a
clan defiantly clutching the crumpled sheets of an alien world in newsprint:
'I still remember sketching her - as casually as I could - remote and uncompromising
as she was, within the depths of her nature.'71 Le Brocquy strives to put
Byzantine rigour into his work, in its two dimensional force of confrontation:
'Cézanne demonstrated in his late works what had been sensed by
Manet, in his symphonic series of paintings from Lola de Valence to Le Balcon. Matter, the painter's reference and subject, ceased
to be expressed objectively as a self-evident solidity, and was now interpreted
as the manifestation of a mysterious inner movement. The amorphous became
crystalline, the opaque transparent, the static kinetic ... At the end
of the long avenue of perspective we have reached conviction in surface:
surface again may be exploited to state the conceptual, the metaphysical
reality of matter; matter seen as it were from inside out. Today we peer
forward in a fundamentally altered landscape. Glancing backwards from our
new position, Byzantine, Romanesque and Gothic forms gain new reality for
us.'72 Moves studio to Clarewood Court, Crawford Street (February 1947), completes Tinker Woman with Newspaper. Widely acknowledged as the
artist's 'Tinker period' masterpiece, the picture will reputedly be seen
by Willem de Kooning at the Stedelïjk Museum, Amsterdam in Twelve
Contemporary British Painters (British Council touring exhibition,
1948-49), prompting commentators - including Dorothy Walker in her monograph on le Brocquy - to speculate on the degree of influence
it may have exercised on the American abstract expressionist's own paintings
of women. At once accepted and successful in the context of London's contemporary
art scene, le Brocquy joins Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Peter Lanyon,
Lynn Chadwick, among the Gimpel Fils gallery stable. According to Dorothy Walker: 'Charles
Gimpel, from then until his comparatively early death, was a whole-hearted
supporter and promoter of le Brocquy and his work, the genuine patron-friend
that the exemplary gallery dealer can be for the artist.'73 Exhibition
at Gimpel Fils, Duke Street (May 1947): Watercolours, including Study, In Fear of Cain (1947), Tinkers with Children (1947), Tinker Breaks Whitethorn (1947). The Times writes:
'His present exhibition confirms one's first impression of an artist with
a new eye, a personal vision which makes itself felt even when he climbs
most obstinately to conventional forms derived from abstract painting;
his feeling for character is well developed and he can observe children
in Regent's park, in one of his most recent works, as sharply as the more
romantic tinkers of Ireland. His use of the medium, whether water-colour
or oil, is both skilful and refined, and he has a delicate sense of colour.'74
Assessing the period, Maurice Collis writes in Penguin Parade: 'He
experienced in reality the dream of every young painter - to show and to
be immediately acclaimed with enthusiasm. The half-dozen pictures hung
at the Leicester Galleries were sold along with some others hastily sent to
reinforce them; among the purchasers was the the Contemporary Art Society,
an organisation that buys with a view to presentation to the Tate ... Later
in 1946 he showed more pictures in the same gallery, on this occasion along
with other Irish painters. Again the response of the public was instantaneous;
the critics, too, for the first time took serious notice of him. His right
course now was to have a one-man show as soon as possible. This was achieved
in the spring of 1947, when some forty of his works were hung at the Gimpel
Fils Gallery and nearly sold out.'75 Work included in Contemporary Irish
Painting, Associated American Artist's Galleries, New York (March 1947), Time Magazine observes: "Best of the lot was a Dubliner ...
Louis le Brocquy (rhythms with rocky), is only 29. His watercolours were
roughly rubbed with wax and scarred with nervous jabs and dashes of indian
ink ... One le Brocquy painting of a little girl bathing in a canal [Child
bather Grand Canal, 1945] spoke of children everywhere.'76 Viewed as
one of the foremost young talents in Britain, and included in Artists
of Fame and Promise, Leicester Galleries, London (October 1947), Macdonald
Hastings writes in London Calling: 'And London has discovered another
startling new artist very recently - Louis le Brocquy. I do not know whether
it is quite fair to claim him for London. Le Brocquy has come from Dublin,
but he is very much under the influence of the contemporary London school.
And it is to London he has come to seek fame and fortune. You could never
mistake a true le Brocquy. An Irish green is almost always the predominant
colour; green and red, under a sensitive tracery of black ink, in a style
which, for lack of a better word, I can only describe as "cubist".
But le Brocquy is not a cubist. He is not a Picasso. He is not a Henry
Moore. His work is something quite individual.'77 Appointed Visiting Instructor, Painting & Mural Design, Central School of Arts & Crafts, London (1947-54, meets fellow
tutors Mervyn Peake, Edouardo Paolozzi and Patrick Heron. Develops innovative
techniques in mural design, including The Enchantment of Merlin,
low cost mosaic commissioned by architects Yorke, Rosenberg & Mardall,
entrance-lobby canopy, College of Further Education, Merthyr Tydvil, Wales
(1954), and Newgrange, marble plaster painted charcoal grey, engraved
by the artist with an electric drill, Tulse Hill Comprehensive School,
London (1954). Experiments with ceramics, etching and lithography, including View at Lucan (1949; hand coloured lithograph, ed. 25), Child
with Doll (1949: Lithograph, ed. 20), Self Portrait (1949; lithograph,
ed. 75), First Tooth (1952, painted ceramic plate), Child with
Moon (1953; etching/aquatint, ed. 25), Child in a Spring Field (1954; etching, ed. 25), Girl Child (1954; Lithograph, ed.
25).
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70 Louis le Brocquy notes, Louis le Brocquy, The Inner
Human Reality, Film documentary directed by Joe Mulholland, RTE 1,
Arts Lives, 21 February 2006, 22.15pm.
71 Statement made to the editor, February 2005.
72 Louis le Brocquy, 'Thoughts on our Time and Jean Lurçat', Ark
17 (London: Royal College of Art, 1956). Reproduced in exhibition catalogue Louis le Brocquy, Seven Tapestries 1948-1955 (Dublin: Dawson
Gallery; Beffast: Ulster Museum 1967) and Louis le Brocquy, Aubusson
Tapestries (Dublin: Taylor Galleries, November 1999; Agnew's, London,
May, 2001).
73 Dorothy Walker, Louis le Brocquy (Dublin: Ward River Press 1981;
London: Hodder & Stoughton 1982), p. 24.
74 The Times, 'Mr. Louis le Brocquy's water=colours' (London, May,
1947).
75 Maurice Collis 'Louis le Brocquy', Penguin Parade, Second Series,
Number II (Middlesex: Penguin Books 1948), p. 52.
76 Time Magazine, 'Home-Brew', Vol. XLIX No. 10 (New York, March
10, 1947).
77 Macdonald Hastings, 'Renaissance Of Art In Britain', London Calling (London, June 19, 1947).
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Tinker Woman with Newspaper, 1947-48
(a.k.a The Last Tinker)
oil on gesso-primed hardboard, 127 x 89 cm
Study for Tinker Woman with Newspaper, 1947
pen, ink, watercolour, gouache on paper
17.8 x 12.4 cm
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